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Planned Parenthood’s Cartoon Fantasyland

You have simply got to drop everything and read this amazing post by Dawn Eden at The Dawn Patrol. She’s got a scene by scene analysis of an animated feature Planned Parenthood uses for agitprop purposes (actually, it can’t be agitprop when you’re the establishment).

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38 thoughts on “Planned Parenthood’s Cartoon Fantasyland”

You’re using one Planned Parenthood clinic in San Francisco (as fanatical a place as any) as the bellweather for an entire organization? That stands up to reasoned thought for about a millisecond.

I’m curious, but do you actually know what most Planned Parenthood clinics do?

I can see you’re on an “establishment” kick. Tell me, Hunter, how are you not establishment? White, educated, member of a Christian sect that claims the most powerful members of Congress and the Presidency… You define establishment.

You clearly demonstrated that much of your “knowledge” of such matters depends on propoganda that is easily refuted. So, the question still remains. You’re clearly trying to make the entirety of Planned Parenthood seem like it’s cut from the same cloth as the looniest fringes of NARAL, so I don’t think it’s out of line to ask you to back up your assertion with knowledge.

Oh, you’re definitely stooges of the pro-corporate GOP, but that doesn’t mean you lack for power.

And thanks for calling me a name. I anxiously await seeing if you and your fellow RCers will hold you to the same rules of decorum you insist from us visitors, or if you will be further revealed as a hypocrite. This is fun.

If you think about it, “planned parenthood” is a really dehumanizing name It treats children as if they were the result of some conscious blueprint made by the parents, the result of a project planned and mapped out by a tidy group of astute engineers. A “wanted child” is a thing. A love child, regardless of whether he is the object of an adult’s desire, is a blessing.

Um, no, it emphasizes family planning. That’s the whole point: That young teens don’t go having kids before they’re ready to, and if they decide to, that they are adequately prepared for the rigors of pregnancy, childbirth, and parenthood. Planned Parenthood’s whole mission is for those children to be born into homes that are prepared for them, so that the focus is on love and health, not frustration or struggle.

How many times have we heard parents say “I love my child but we weren’t ready for kids, and that’s made it harder” or “We aren’t ready, so we’re waiting to have children”? You’re grasping at straws.

James, that link didn’t “demonstrate” anything but you taking issue with me and Doc Zycher.

As far as the question of whether Planned Parenthood is radical goes, I’ll stick by my view of them as well outside the mainstream. After all, they fully support that procedure that you say is so incredibly rare and thus doesn’t matter. Kind of like torture, I guess.

Oh. My. God. You people literally have NO IDEA what you’re talking about. The vast majority of Planned Parenthood clinics don’t provide abortions, you dillweeds. (Don’t worry, I’m “hailing” you.) You can go to a clinic from Chicago to San Jose to New Mexico and wouldn’t be able to get one there.

What they DO do, is provide comprehenseive information on all options available to teens and low-income women. Comparing this to the Nazis is nothing short of poorly thought-out invective hyperbole of the rankest sort. Your fanatacism blinds you to the very real, very beneficial services PP provides.

Hunter, they don’t EXPOUND the virtues of abortion, they provide INFORMATION on it. Even a village idiot should be able to tell the difference. But then, you must be one of those people who thinks that adding sex ed to abstinence education encourages sex. It would appear that good thinking and clear reasoning is no match for zealotry.

There’s no doubt that Planned Parenthood serves the function you say it does, but the entire enterprise is essentially 180 degrees opposed to a Christian view of the person, sex, reproduction, etc. And the final solution (another good Nazi reference for you) is always cheerfully endorsed.

I have to pass on something from Southern Appeal, where we also discussed this issue. A commenter objected that PP is a social services organization. Another replied, “So is Hamas.” And it is, before any object. It truly is. Love it.

James Elliot,Your willingness to employ utilitarianism and pragmatism blinds you to the blood on the hands of this organization. Doing a little good does not somehow tip the scales and give them a pass on murder. At least not outside of bizzarro relativism world.

What they DO do, is provide comprehenseive information on all options available to teens and low-income women.

James, I admit in advance my ignorance of what goes on in a Planned Parenthood facility (clinic? store?).

Is the information comprehensive? The adoption option? How the kids permitted to survive do, whether adopted or sent to orphanages?

And, not to my mind, but to my heart, the short- and long-term psychological effects on women who have aborted their blastocyst/embryo/fetus/babies?

No moral high horse here, just perhaps an honest concern for the Norma McCorveys out there. (I trust you know who she is, JE, or as an honest inquirer, will google her to find out.)

I, as a male, never faced that “choice,” and to my knowledge neither did any of my premarital sexual partners. But looking back, I cannot say that anything I was doing or have done since was more important than a son or daughter.

If you want to know about family planning, go to these free institutions known as libraries. You can read about anything there. It’s amazing. They were once known as “the people’s universities.”

I suppose what I am saying is that I don’t see “a right to family planning information” as implying a right to a massive tax-subsidized operation that openly castigates a large portion of the American citizenry.

So, Nazi analogies remain kosher only so long as anti-choice, option-limiting Christians make them. Ah. The double standards become clearer.

TVD, to answer your question, you can go to http://www.plannedparenthood.org or go visit your local clinic. Indeed, the information is comprehensive, including adoption options. They also offer counseling. There are a lot of options. Planned Parenthood’s whole purpose is to ensure that women have as many options as possible and all the information they could want on them.

And yes, TVD, anyone who’s informed on this subject knows who Norma is.

Hunter, you’re seriously grasping at straws. There is no guarantee that a library has comprehensive information. Nor does it have medical professionals there to answer questions, provide sex ed, and prenatal care. PP does.

Your “tax-subsidized entity that attacks citizenry”… cough cough CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS cough cough… is dedicated to comprehensive sexual and reproductive care for all women. I can’t see a problem with that.

Did you know that you can download PP’s IRS forms from their website? I did. Turns out that your “tax-subsidized” is a little less than entirely accurate, unless you’re running on pure semantics. And we all know how much you love antics. They have a more than $53 million budget, less than $474,000 of which comes from local, state, and federal government grants for research and education programs.

James,You are right. Nazi analogies really do not do justice to the abortion movement in America. After all, the Holocaust exterminated about six million Jews. I am not sure there are good records on the rest of their activities (eg gypsies). I think the Soviet purges are a much better comparision, numbers wise. Only they can reach the level of horror of our 40 million abortions

Don’t you find hyperbole boring? I mean, so much time, so much effort, and nothing to show for it? Next you’ll be telling me that miscarriages are murder and that rape victims should be stoned to death to preserve your honor.

You may want to return to the Sea of Galilee and stoning innocent people for disagreeing with your world view, but please, don’t drag the rest of us into your hate-addled version of reality. Rationality is hard enough to come by as it is on this issue.

Yep, the issue with abortion has always been and will always be whether some will force their views on all. No one is trying to force Christians to accept abortion. Unfortunately Christians are trying to force others to prevent abortion based on their own personal views of humanity.

The Nazi analogy breaks down because… well… it’s ludicrously stupid. A blastocyte is not a human being no matter how much you say otherwise. It’s a small cluster of cells. As such it has no rights. If the host (i.e. mother) wishes to remove some cells from her she can, just as you can get a mole removed.

It also says that serious psychiatric side effects can occur, and goes on to ennumerate them. You can find the link right under the one you refer to. I’d call that pretty even-handed.

Just as with any personal decision, abortion can, but does not necessarily, lead to emotional difficulties. Walking down the street can set in motion a chain of events that leads to psychological harm. As y’all are so fond of saying, correlation doesn’t necessarily indicate causality. There’s a huge correlation between a community’s or family’s attitude to abortion and the post-abortion psychiatric difficulties a woman may experience (say, perhaps members of her religious community condemning her act, knowlingly or unknowingly, driving her to depression). That’s why PP also refers women to pre-abortion and to grief counseling. PP wants women to enter the decision fully cognizant of all that is involved and then let them make their own choice. It’s not like there’s a phalanx of women standing behind the girl chanting “Abort! Abort!” Give me a fricking break, Tom.

PP is a non-profit mental health and medical health organization. Abortion is only ONE issue they deal with, because it is enfolded into women’s health. It’s not the end-all be-all of their mission, Tom. PP clinics also don’t have to provide an abortion clinic, as evidenced by the fact that most of them DON’T. This shouldn’t be that difficult for you. You’re a smart guy, figure it out: Planned Parenthood is concerned with women’s reproductive and sexual health. This includes, but is not limited to, abortion as one pregnancy option.

Frankly, that’s what offends you. That they’re not willing to make the choice for someone else.

“There’s a huge correlation between a community’s or family’s attitude to abortion and the post-abortion psychiatric difficulties a woman may experience”

As a side note about unintended consequences it’s worth pointing out that those areas in which abortion and sex education are the most condemned also have the highest rates of accidental pregnancies. As the left side of the equation has always said pretending sex doesn’t exist causes more harm than good. Dealing with it rationally may be uncomfortable but is needed badly.

“It is against their policy to let mothers see the ultrasound pictures of their fetuses. In fact, they fight it whenever and wherever they can.”

Do you have documentation of them saying this? Becuase it sounds an awful lot like the reams of made up stuff pro-li(f)e campaigns spew out. Kind of like the reams of lies directed at Michael Schiavo and Judge Greer. Same crowd, same tactics.

Seeing as how most abortion clinics are independent and/or local operations and that Planned Parenthood has a gargantuan number of clinics, a percentage of which provide abortions, your “statistic” (if true) is not surprising but also meaningless. You act as if that invalidates their mission, and it fails to do any such thing except in the eyes of fanatics.

As for your “policy,” I can’t see how that’s true. It would be against the law. Ultrasounds, like x-rays, are the patient’s property.

Boy, there must be a LOT of fanatics running round. The numbers on pro-life/pro-choice just keep getting worse for you gents. Just a few years ago, it was reported that a majority of college freshmen were more pro-life than the unspeakable alternative. Fanaticism is on the move! Long live fanaticism, which apparently amounts to common decency.

Exactly, T. Also, all the recent numbers I’ve seen suggest that only 17% of the nation want to ban abortion outright. Some 52% want the laws (or judicial fiats, so Hunter’s head doesn’t explode) to remain as is. That was a Gallup poll released this month.

James- Isn’t it amazing how many men vote for a woman’s “choice”. Wouldn’t you love to do a census on how many of them are in a committed relationship with a woman? By my observations (over 40 years of being in the counseling field with teens and adults), I have found that it’s the noncommited men or the adulterous ones who are very serious about seeing that abortion remains an option for their perforated-uterine-post-abortive sex objects.

And it’s not a woman’s “own body”. From the first cell, it’s half the woman’s, half the man’s. How many men of character want the women to have _all_ the right to decide what to do with their unborn? By the Kantian “Categorical Imperative”, it stinks as a moral standard. If all women chose to abort their unborn, men would never father children and humanity would be extinguished.

And, yes, I DO know what happens in PP centers. More than men. I’ve been there, done that, and wiped up with the T-shirt.

I second Rose. I don’t usually like to play the “you wouldn’t understand….it’s a woman thing” card. I like to think that anyone can reason about this issue. But from an experiential and introspective viewpoint: men do not, and possibly cannot, understand what drives women to abortion, what they experience as a result, and the grief that eats at them in consequence. I have sat in more than one Planned Parenthood clinic, giving emotional support to women I loved. I can’t say anything more specific without violating confidences I still feel bound by, 25 and 30 years later. From this vantage point, for a man to suggest that what went on there had anything to do with “women’s health” or “choice” or “information” or “love” is simply grotesque.

“James- Isn’t it amazing how many men vote for a woman’s “choice”. Wouldn’t you love to do a census on how many of them are in a committed relationship with a woman? By my observations (over 40 years of being in the counseling field with teens and adults), I have found that it’s the noncommited men or the adulterous ones who are very serious about seeing that abortion remains an option for their perforated-uterine-post-abortive sex objects.”

Neat but not very relevent. Those single guys still get a vote last time I checked (although I’m sure Dobson would like that changed). Just for the record I am married and believe abortion should be legal within certain limits.

“And it’s not a woman’s “own body”. From the first cell, it’s half the woman’s, half the man’s. How many men of character want the women to have _all_ the right to decide what to do with their unborn?”

While I certainly hope a woman will take into account her partner’s views the fact remains that it’s her body and not his that goes through pregnancy. She’s the host, not him. And if she doesn’t want those paticular cells attached to her that is her choice.

“Real men don’t picket for abortion.”

Oh gosh you attacked my masculinity, now I have to support you or seem like a wimp. What ever will I do?

I have a couple questions for those of you making the argument that an onborn human is just a “blob of cells” that a woman has the right to remove:

At what point does the “blob of cells” become human – deserving of human rights?

What is the distinguishing marker that makes it go from “blob of cells” to human?

I truly don’t understand your logic, so help me out here. Why does an embryo have no rights – but a baby three-minutes old does?

Comments are closed.

Bestselling author Andrew Klavan on The End of Secularism:

Anyone who works in the writing business will understand: I don’t have time to read books sent or lent to me unrequested. What with informational reading, professional reading and reading for my craft and spirit, even books I want to get to sometimes have to wait as long as a year. Plus I don’t remember ever having met Hunter Baker of [Union] University so I don’t know why he had his publisher send me his new book The End of Secularism. But I’m startled to report I glanced at it while laying it aside, then picked it up again, then read it through. This is a very well written, concise and learned primer on the secularization of the public square. It gives a fair recital of the arguments in favor of it, and a strong but sensible and moderate outline of the arguments against. It has a firm grasp of history and neither falls for the usual “This is a Christian country!” rhetoric that makes its way onto television nor accepts the “separation of church and state,” pieties that were rendered obsolete by the state’s aggressive intrustion into what Dr. Baker calls “the life-world,” ie. our values and private lives. It’s a book you’ll be glad you read the next time you get in an argument about religion’s role in politics. I wish I had time to write a full review of this book in a respectable venue (as opposed to this Blog of Ill Repute!). I just don’t. But if anyone from First Things or World Magazine or even the Weekly Standard or NRO is skulking through here and sees this, I think the book is well worth discovering.